Single magnolia flower with tree blurred behind
London,  The Changing Seasons,  Themed galleries

Gallery: a March selection (2024)

April 3, 2024 / 43 Comments

A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, a wind comes off a frozen peak, and you’re two months back in the middle of March.

Robert Frost

Sitting on the plane that brought us home from Mexico we were congratulating ourselves on our timing. Tomorrow would be the first of March, and spring, we thought, just around the corner. We should have known better! Although in the fairly recent past (most notably the lockdown spring of 2020) we’ve had some wonderful March weather, this time last year I was writing that, ‘With a slow start to the spring this year it’s felt at times as if March was coming in more like a polar bear than a lion!’ And so it was again this year.

We have had a lot of rain this month and a lot of grey skies even when not raining, even if at times temperatures have been significantly above the average. But where’s the fun in being warm if it’s pouring with rain?! A case in point: one lunch time we spotted a rare break in the clouds and blue skies overhead. We decided that as soon as we’d finished eating we would go out to photograph the local magnolia trees, so popular in Ealing gardens. They look so much better with blue sky as a backdrop! But by the time we were ready to go out, maybe thirty minutes later, skies were grey again. We did go out, and we did photograph magnolias, but you won’t find any sky in my photos below!

It’s been a stay-at-home month but that doesn’t mean a particularly quiet one. There have been the usual cinema visits (‘Bob Marley: One Love’, ‘The Taste of Things’, and ‘Monster’ – all good in different ways but I especially liked the last of them). Also meals out with friends or just the two of us, an evening out with friends visiting London from Germany, and an outing to the Photographers’ Gallery. We stayed at home over Easter too, with family visiting for the day on Easter Sunday.

But we don’t stay home for long, so April will bring a long weekend in Sardinia where we hope to finally find some spring sunshine!

Technical notes

Most of these shots were taken with my compact Panasonic Lumix or with my phone, but for the one of the parakeet I used my Panasonic bridge camera. Most have been at least a little edited with Photoshop Elements and some more heavily edited with Nik Color Efex.

As always I am linking my selection to Ju-Lyn’s and Brian’s Changing Seasons challenge. Use the arrows to navigate the slideshow if you want to see all the images.

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43 Comments

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